After 18 months of one canceled fight after another, Dan Lauzon is busy, focused and – perhaps most importantly – staying out of trouble.

“I want to stay as busy as possible,” Lauzon told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “When I have something set up – a (fight) date and something to look forward to – that’s when I’m most focused and most motivated, and I stay on top of things. It’s all the downtime … when I’m running around with my crazy-ass friends and lose some of my focus.”

Lauzon’s focus has been evident as he prepares for Friday’s World Series of Fighting 3 bout with fellow UFC vet and lightweight John Gunderson (34-14-2). The preliminary-card bout streams on MMAjunkie.com live from Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.

For Lauzon (16-4), it’s his first fight since December 2011 and an opportunity to extend his four-fight winning streak. It’s also an opportunity to prove his recommitment to MMA.

A little more than two years ago, it was easy to question such a commitment. In early 2011, he was hospitalized after being stabbed outside a bar back home in Massachusetts. With one of those “crazy-ass friends,” Lauzon was walking from one bar to another when he said a group of about 15 guys confronted him and his friend. Lauzon’s friend started jawing with a guy from the other group.

“I told the kid, ‘You guys have been drinking. We’ve been drinking. You go that way, and we’ll go this way. It’s no big deal,'” Lauzon said. “This kid was like, ‘If you knew what’s good for you, you’d walk the other way.'”

If he were another member of the Lauzon clan, he may have turned the other cheek. Lauzon has two older brothers, including UFC lightweight contender Joe Lauzon, and they both largely avoided confrontation growing up, the younger Lauzon said. They were good kids and could handle themselves, but they weren’t looking for a fight. By the time Dan Lauzon was coming into his own, though, he said his parents told him it was OK to stick up for himself. They didn’t want their son searching out fights, but both his mother and father told him he could take care of himself.

Perhaps that’s why Lauzon reacted the way he did when the guy outside the bar spit on him.

“The way I was raised, that’s the most disrespectful thing you can do,” he said. “If someone spits on you, you literally have to fight them. You can’t walk away from that. That’s how it was.”

As Lauzon squared up and then dropped the spitter, the loudmouth’s hooded buddy approached from behind, took his hands out of his pocket, and sucker-punched him, he said. During the scuffle, something else also happened.

“I’m standing there, and my shoulder was just on fire, and it was just burning hot, and I could feel s–t running down my chest and back,” Lauzon said. “I reached in and wiped my shoulder. It was all blood on my hand. I reached again, and more blood. So I took off my shirt off, wiped it, and I could tell I had gotten stabbed. I turned to the kid. ‘You stabbed me?'”

Lauzon was more incredulous than pissed. Perhaps it also served a wakeup call. When the police arrived, he told them he didn’t know who stabbed him. He didn’t want to ruin one guy’s life over it.

“Granted, the kid was a piece of s–t for doing it, but I really don’t believe in ratting out people to the cops like that,” Lauzon said.

So life went on. But with a promising MMA career, a supportive family and a world of opportunity, he couldn’t see pissing it all away over such stupid stuff.

“I think that was the last time I got into a street fight. Yeah it was,” he said. “If someone is going to stab you over something that dumb, that’s pretty pathetic to me.”

A year prior to the stabbing, Lauzon was preparing for a UFC 114 fight with Efrain Escudero. After becoming the youngest fighter in UFC history with a loss to Spencer Fisher in 2006, Lauzon had fought his way back into the organization. But ahead of the eventual defeat to Escudero, his camp was in chaos, and brother Joe and his other cornermen severed times with him. The younger Lauzon was unfocused and unprepared, they said.

Since then, following the stabbing and with a recommitment to his fight career, Dan is now back in the winner’s column and preparing for one of his biggest bouts yet. That’s why his brother – the one who first game him his “Upgrade” nickname – is now back in his corner.

“We’re getting along,” Joe said. “I think a big part of it before was that we did not see eye to eye on anything. We couldn’t even get along together in training. It was like a very, very toxic training relationship where we’d both try to murder each other every chance.

“But it’s been awesome lately. The last six to eight months, maybe a bit longer, we’ve been getting together awesome.”

MMAjunkie.com Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, MMAjunkie.com lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.

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